Wednesday, November 26, 2014

A watchful eye opens on India's coastline

Exactly
six years ago to the day, “Kuber,” a fishing trawler registered
in the Porbandar city of Gujarat as PBR2342 was speeding under cover
of darkness, towards India's commercial capital Mumbai. Riding the
boat, were 10 men, armed to their teeth and a “tandel” (ship's
captain), who was steering the ship under duress with a gun pointed
at his head. The trawler was earlier hijacked by them in the Arabian
sea, when it was on a fishing trip and all its crew members, except
the “tandel,” were murdered in plain daylight and thrown
overboard. As the ship neared the coast, the men asked the “tandel”
to slow down and quietly shot him and threw him overboard.
Immediately, the men transferred themselves to two inflatable
speedboats and rushed to Colaba coastline of south Mumbai. The 10 men
were Pakistani members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization
based in Pakistan itself. After reaching the shore around 2000 Hrs,
they went ahead with precision, what they had planned to do- launch a
terrible terror attack on Mumbai. By the time they were
killed-rounded up by police, 4 days later,164 innocent people had
lost their lives and 308 seriously wounded.

One
question had troubled India's security organizations, during
investigations on the case that how did “Kuber” made it almost to
the coastline, without being noticed? As the case progressed, came
the stark realization, that India's coastline needs to be monitored
24X7 basis and there are gaping holes along the coastline security
through which an attack like the one on 26th
November was launched and can be repeated anytime again.

To
guard against any such attacks in future, Indian Navy and coastguard
have now set up an Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC)
at the Air Force station compound in Gurgaon near India's capital New
Delhi. This centre will operate a brand new system called as National
Command Control Communication and Intelligence Network (NC3I) to
interlink 20 naval and 31 Coast Guard monitoring stations to generate
a seamless real-time picture of India's nearly 7,500-km-long
coastline.

NC31
will collect, coastal surveillance information obtained from various
sensors such as the coastal radar chain of the Indian Coast Guard,
which consists of 46 radars (and 30 additional radars in planning
stage, to fill all the gaps) and automatic tracking systems as well
as electro-optical cameras. Apart from coastal radars and optical
sensors, NC31 will also draw information from automatic
identification systems fitted on merchant ships and has a
comprehensive shipping database of world registers of shipping for
analysis of traffic. It is capable of handling 30000 to 40000 ships
per day.

Enormity
of the challenge to monitor the coastline can be judged from a few
facts. India is a maritime nation with 90 percent of its trade
through the sea. It has about 5,000 merchant ships around and two to
three hundred thousand fishing boats operating on our coast line.
There are chances of sea piracy also.

51
Naval and Coast Guard stations linked by NC31, are connected to IMAC
on dedicated terrestrial data circuits linked by high speed optical
fibre networks and satellite links that serve as a back-up in case of
emergency and connectivity to stations in remote locations. Data
from various sensors and databases will be aggregated, correlated
and then disseminated to various stations or hubs for enhanced
awareness.

According
to a Naval official, guarding land borders through fencing,
electronic devices and pickets is comparatively an easy task. At sea,
there is no such luxury. The NC3I network should prove here to be of
great value as it would be able to alert the Navy and the coastguard
of all unusual or suspicious movements and activities at sea.

The
project, approved in 2012, has been completed and has become
operational in 15 months at a cost of Rs.4.53 Billion. The network
was built by state owned Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) which has
sourced customised software from the US' Raytheon corporation. The
software incorporates hi-tech features like data fusion, correlation
and decision support features thus facilitating better decision
making.

India's
defence minister, while inaugurating the system, made mention of some
gaps in the radar coverage on west coast, which has led to an
increase in smuggling activities. With the balance radars in place,
these gaps would get closed eventually.

IMAC
is no doubt a step in right direction and the nation can breathe a
little easier from now on.